Born on this day
Wednesday, January 4, 1809. : Louis Braille, inventor of the raised-dot writing system for the blind, is born.
Louis Braille, inventor of the Braille writing system for the blind, was born on 4 January 1809 in Coupvray near Paris, France. At the age of three, Braille injured his left eye with an awl in his father’s workshop. This caused an infection in his left eye which spread to his right eye, resulting in him going blind.
From age 10, Braille attended the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. One day, retired army captain Charles Barbier de la Serre visited the school, showing the students a system of night writing using twelve raised dots representing letters and numbers which could be identified by touch. This method of communication had been created so that soldiers could pass orders silently at night. Braille, then thirteen years old, experimented with and adapted the system by using just 6 dots, which were easier to manipulate. By the time Braille was fifteen, he had developed the system sufficiently for use by other blind students. Braille is now widely in use for sight-impaired people throughout the world.
Australian History
Sunday, January 4, 1688. : English sea explorer William Dampier first lands on Australian soil.
English sea explorer William Dampier was born at East Coker in Somerset and baptised on 8 June 1652. He commenced his seafaring career at the age of sixteen.
As an experienced sea captain and pirate, he became the first Englishman to explore and map parts of New Holland and New Guinea. On 4 January 1688, his ship the ‘Cygnet’ was beached on the northwest coast of Australia, at King Sound near Buccaneer Archipelago on the north-west coast of Australia. While the ship was being repaired Dampier made notes on the fauna and flora he found there.
Dampier was unimpressed by the dry, barren landscape, the lack of water and what he described as the “miserablest people in the world” – the native population. His negative reports led to the delay of England’s colonisation of what is now Australia. It was not until 1770 that James Cook reported positively on the green, fertile countryside of New South Wales, and England sought to colonise the previously unknown continent.
Australian History
Thursday, January 4, 1810. : Governor Lachlan Macquarie takes strong action to restore order following the deposition of Governor Bligh in the Rum Rebellion.
In 1805, William Bligh was assigned as Governor to the colony of New South Wales. He was a strong leader, resolving to restore discipline to the colony. However, he received criticism for his seemingly despotic ways. His chief critic was grazier and wool grower John Macarthur, who convinced men from the New South Wales Corps to rebel against Bligh. Early in 1808, Governor Bligh was overthrown and replaced with a military Junta. This event later became known as the Rum Rebellion, though it had nothing to do with rum. The name came about because Bligh asserted that Macarthur’s main attack against the Governor came about because of his prohibition on Spirits. Although initially imprisoned following the Rum Rebellion, Bligh was exonerated in 1811, after which he returned to England.
Lachlan Macquarie arrived in New South Wales to take up the position of Governor in 1809. On 4 January 1810, he set about quelling the dissension resulting from the Rum Rebellion. He dismissed all who had been appointed to positions of authority since Bligh had been deposed, and he cancelled all trials, lands grants and bequests given to members of the New South Wales Corps. This was the first of many reforms initiated by Governor Macquarie in an attempt to restore order to the colony.
World History
Wednesday, January 4, 1967. : Donald Campbell, the man who broke the land and water speed records in the same year, is killed as he attempts another record.
Donald Malcolm Campbell was born on 23 March 1921 in Horley, Surrey, England. He became the only person to ever break both the world land speed and water speed records in the same year. He broke the land speed record in July 1964 on a Lake Eyre salt flat in northern South Australia, with a speed of 648.72 km per hour. After setting seven world water-speed records between 1955 and 1964, the culmination of his water speed records came on 31 December 1964 at Dumbleyung Lake, Western Australia, when he reached 444.71 km per hour in his jet-powered boat, Bluebird.
Campbell was killed three years later, on 4 January 1967. He was attempting to break his record yet again, this time on Lake Coniston, Cumbria. Just before his Bluebird K7 broke the record, travelling at over 483 km per hour, the boat’s nose lifted and it was catapulted 15m into the air. Campbell was killed instantly as the boat hit the water and disintegrated. His body was not recovered from the wreckage at the bottom of the lake for another 34 years. Campbell remains the only person to have held both land and water speed records at the same time.
World History
Wednesday, January 4, 1989. : The irregular Toutatis asteroid is formally discovered.
The 4179 Toutatis/1989 AC is an asteroid with an irregular orbit. Its very low orbital inclination (0.47°) and its orbital period of just under 4 years causes Toutatis to make regular close approaches to Earth. One such recent approach occurred on 29 September 2004, when it came within 4 lunar distances of Earth, or 0.0104 AU (astronomical units), but its minimum possible distance is only 0.006 AU, or 2.3 times as far as the Moon. There was no danger of Toutatis impacting the Earth, but its proximity provided excellent opportunities for observation of the asteroid.
Toutatis was first observed on 10 February 1934, but only named when it was rediscovered by astronomer Christian Pollas on 4 January 1989. It is a very irregularly shaped object consisting of two lobes, one measuring approximately 4.6 km wide and the other 2.4 km wide.